Yizkor Books in Print

The Yizkor Books Project is pleased to announce the intention to print fully translated Yizkor Books, so that copies will be available for purchase by the descendants of those destroyed communities, as well as by museum, university and synagogue libraries. Our intention is for this unique literature to be the source for teaching the history of these towns. We are aware that people can print the material from the web, and many will continue to do so.
Nevertheless we feel there are those who would treasure a professionally printed version they can hold in their hands, or store on their own bookshelves Our project will offer affordable copies since the project was created both as a service to the public and as a memorial to the destroyed Jewish communities.

Background of Yizkor (memorial) Books:

These Yizkor (memorial) books were originally written by survivors or former residents of the towns who gathered in Landsleit groups mainly in Israel, the US and South America. They initially wrote down their memories of the town informally in the 1950s and 1960s. These writings were eventually turned into books in the Yiddish and Hebrew languages. There are over 2000 such books, however this unique body of literature had not been available to the English reading public. Now more than 80 of them have been fully translated into English in the Yizkor Books project of JewishGen and appear on the project web site http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/ along with partially translated books. Of those, we have thus far published 23 books in hard cover, with more being worked on.

Notice of special discounted prices to Libraries, Synagogues, Holocaust Memorials and families:

We are pleased to announce that we can offer special discounted prices for orders of five (5) books or more to a single address. The prices are approximately 25% below the Amazon discounted price. The order can be for five (or more) different titles or five (or more) copies of the same book. (The five book minimum limit is firm.)

If you are interested in obtaining specific prices, please contact Joel Alpert, coordinator of the Yizkor Books in Print Project.

Note: The offer does not apply to the two titles:

Protecting Our Litvak Heritage (A History of 50 Jewish Communities in Lithuania) and the Memorial Book for the Jewish Community of Yurburg, Lithuania

Translation of Brisk de-Lita: Encycolpedia Shel Galuyot
Original Yiddish Volume Edited by Elieser Steinman Published in Jerusalem, 1958
498 pages, 8.5" by 11", hard cover, including all photos and other images

List Price: $56.95 Available on Amazon for around $41, may have lower prices elsewhere

Original Book Edited by A. Alperin and N. Summer
Translated from the Yiddish by Renee Miller
English Edition Coordinated and Edited by Fay Vogel Bussgang
Published by JewishGen
464 pages with all images

List Price: $61.95 Available on Amazon for $45.22, may have lower prices elsewhere

Original written in Hebrew
Edited by Yisrael Cohen
Published in Tel Aviv, 1956
Translation Project Coordinator and Book Layout: Thomas Weiss
360 pages, 8.5" by 11", hard cover, including all photos and other images

List Price: $57.95 Available on Amazon for around $42, may have lower prices elsewhere

Original written in Hebrew and Yiddish
Edited by A. Wolf Yassini, Tel Aviv 1962
Translated into English by Miriam Dashkin Beckerman
Project Coordinator, Stan Zeidenberg
518 pages, 8.5" by 11", hard cover, including all photos and other images

List price: $57.95 Available at Amazon for $42, may have lower prices elsewhere

Original Yizkor Book Edited by: Shimon Meltzer
Published in Yiddish and Hebrew in Tel Aviv, 1963
Translation Project Coordinator, Mark Heckman
558 pages, 8.5" by 11", hard cover, including all photos and other images

List price: $51.95 Available at Amazon for $41, may have lower prices elsewhere

Original written in Hebrew
Edited by Moshe Nathan Even Chaim (Rapaport), Tel Aviv 1953
Translated into English by William Leibner and edited by Phyllis Kramer
316 pages, 8.5" by 11", hard cover, including all photos and other images

List price: $49.95 Available at Amazon for $36, may have lower prices elsewhere

Project Coordinator and Translator: William Leibner
Editor: Phyllis Kramer
Original Yiddish Book edited by Morris Zucker and Isaac Wasserstrom
New York, 1967
310 pages, 8.5" by 11", hard cover, including all photos and other images and new lists of residents compiled recently

List price: $49.95 Available at Amazon for $36, may have lower prices elsewhere

Editors of the original Yizkor Book: Eliezer Yerushalmi and David Cohen
Translations: Oskar Delatycki zl and Aviva Kamil
Project coordinator: Oskar Delatycki zl
Editor of this publication: Rabbi Helen Cohn
Hard cover, 784 pages, with full illustrations and photos from the original book
ISBN: 978-1-939561-03-9

List price: $65.95 Available on Amazon for around $45, may have lower prices elsewhere

Original written in Hebrew, Yiddish and English
Edited by Shimon Kanc
Published in Tel Aviv, 1974
Translation Project Coordinator and Book Layout: Thomas Weiss
Translated into English by Jerrold Landau
512 pages, 8.5" by 11", hard cover, including all photos and other images

Original written in Hebrew and Yiddish
Collected and Edited by Mayer Sokolowsky
Supplementary chapters in Yiddish by Joseph Abramovitsch
Translated from the Hebrew and Yiddish by Jerrold Landau
Co-Editors, Edie Taylor and Brian Zakem
458 pages, 6.69" by 9.61", hard cover, including all photos and other images
Published in November 2014

The Yizkor-Books-In-Print project is indeed an extremely important project.

Professor David Patterson
Hillel Feinberg Chair in Holocaust Studies Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies University of Texas at Dallas

* * *

Upon finding out that the Ohrei Yizkor Book was published and available, one researcher wrote:
I have been waiting 33 years since I first came across that book in the New York Public Library and was unable to read it because I couldn't understand Yiddish. Thanks. Will purchase it.

* * *

In a world in which fewer and fewer people speak and read Yiddish, and where many Jews outside of Israel do not read Hebrew fluently, the translation of these Yizkor books into English is a very important project. These books were frequently the first publications about a given community or a number of contiguous communities, and if for no other reason than that, they are of great significance. Although most are not works of traditional scholarship, they do contain extremely valuable information about the history of Jewish communities and their destruction, recollections and vignettes about daily life and the people who lived in those communities, and frequently lists of those who were murdered during the Shoah. Making them accessible to a wider public is important today and undoubtedly will remain important in the future. I am very pleased that the Yizkor-Books-in-Print Project of JewishGen has donated these books to our library collection and I am quite certain that our readers will find them to be of much use. For our part we hope to preserve them for future generations. 

Dr. Robert Rozett
Director of the Libraries, Yad Vashem

* * *

I have the original book in Yiddish and Hebrew but always wanted a copy of the English translation, which I haven't been able to find until now so thank you! I've ordered the book and have notified the rest of my family in the States about it.

JewishGen's Yizkor Book translations are an invaluable resource for readers who cannot read the original languages, and a welcome supplement to the Yiddish Book Center's facsimile reprints of Yizkor Books from the New York Public Library's collection. Yasher koyekh!


Catherine Madsen
Bibliographer
Yiddish Book Center

* * *

The Ciechanow Yizkor book is so precious to our family. My mother, Leah Lonia Kirshenbaum Mosak is a Ciechanower who survived Auschwitz Birkenau; she is now 91 years old. She will not let go of the book and reads from it every day.

Doris Lazarus

* * *

Although the Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Campus has just about every memorial book in the original language, we are very pleased to be able to add the English translations being offered by Jewishgen. Our English-only speaking Library users are thrilled to be able to read about their families' hometowns and possibly trace their relatives without the help of a translator. We have every Yizkor Book in Print Project title published so far and look forward to adding more as they become available. They are of the highest quality and enhance our collection immeasurably. Thank you, Jewishgen!

As someone who has lost ancestors and family in the Holocaust, I can truly say that the Turka Yizkor book will allow my siblings and me to make the connection and pass it on to our children so we can preserve their memory.

Ed Nagler,
Panama City, FL

* * *

How we print the books:

The project uses the Print on Demand model, which utilizes the latest technology for being able to print even single books on demand and ship to individual buyers, without requiring runs of hundreds of books. Hence here is no minimum requirement of number of books to be ordered, nor is there a storage problem, nor an unsold books problem. It is ideal for our situation with a limited specalized audience. Book interiors are in black and white, whereas the covers are in color and often are replicas of the covers of the original Hebrew and Yiddish Yizkor Books or contain some artwork from the books or displays a significant historic photo.

Message to Coordinators of Yizkor Books for Prospective Printing:

We print only fully translated books for which we have permission from the copyright holder of the original Yiddish or Hebrew book to print the translation. If you are interested in getting your book in the queue for processing to be printed and published, first you must make sure that the Yizkor Book Project either already has that permission to publish or that you can get it - for clarifications on these issues, please contact Lance Ackerfeld
. Desirable, but not necessary are higher resolution scans (300 dpi or preferably 600 dpi) of the images from the book than were used for the on-line version (72 dpi). When you have satisfied these requirements, then please contact Joel Alpert, Project Coordinator.

Looking for Volunteers:

In order to accomplish this task, we are looking for talented people who are willing to volunteer to make this effort happen. Below we list the people and talents we are looking for. We want to create a team of several people with each of the talents. We would assign one of each of the volunteer categories below to a book, with the exception of the Document Coordinator, Cover Editor and Publicity Specialist - one or two each for the whole project. We list the tasks with the highest needs at the top. If you can help, we'd appreciate your efforts in the task.

Book Coordinators:

Most likely the project coordinator of the Yizkor book website for that community. If necessary, obtain permissions necessary to publish the book from the organization or person holding the copyright on the original Hebrew/Yiddish Yizkor book. Create a new Preface and Acknowledgements, Credits etc. appropriate to the publishing of the book in English.

Image Processors:

We need volunteers who can process the PDF files (600 dpi resolution) to extract the images of the photos and maps and illustrations to create individual JPEG files so that they can then be inserted into the text of the books in the proper place. Volunteers will need to have the Photoshop or similar software to accomplish the task. This will enable us to produce high quality images for the books.

Layout Editors:

Take files from the Yizkor Book website and copy into MS WORD files for each book chapter. Not necessary to proof read the material. We are printing the books as they appear on the Yizkor Books Project pages. Format the files according to a template supplied changing headings, image captions, etc into a standard format. Imbed the images from the Image Coordinator in the proper place in the text. Edit the material so that the layout has images in a place near the reference to the image. Re-editing and proof reading of material not expected.

Cover Editors for the whole project:

Create the cover using Photo Shop of some other software likely using a scan of the original Yizkor Book cover and modifying it by inserting English, laying it out on a provided template; or possibly creating a totally new cover. One or several people to do this for the whole project.

Publicity Specialist for the whole project:

Deal with publicity for books. Send out announcements to all researchers signed up for each community covered in the book to be published. Develop list of libraries, university libraries with Judaic collections, Holocaust Memorials, temple libraries, etc. that would likely be interested in purchasing copies of the Yizkor Books in Print. Send off periodic announcements to these institutions about new Yizkor books now available. One person or several people to do this for the whole project.

If you feel that you are able to take on one of these tasks, please contact the Yizkor Books in Print Coordinator  Joel Alpert